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Idaho: Boise Superintendent Stands Up to the Privatizing Albertson Foundation

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
13

Dr. Don Coberly, the superintendent of the Boise, Idaho, school district, wrote a blunt letter to the district’s staff telling them not to believe the smears disseminated by the rich and powerful Albertson Foundation. This would be like the superintendent of Los Angeles telling Eli Broad to take his money and go away. Or the superintendent of any district turning down a bribe from the Gates Foundation to open more charters.

 

 

For his courage, I add Don Coberly to the blog’s honor roll.

 

 

The Albertson Foundation has been pushing charters and virtual charters. It doesn’t like public education. It is running an anti-public school campaign called “Don’t Fail Idaho.” It is about time that an educator with guts started a campaign calling out the Albertson Foundation for their anti-public school propaganda. Call it the “Albertson Foundation Fails Democracy” campaign.

 

 

Superintendent Coberly wrote:

 
Dear Boise School District staff member:

 

It’s been a while since we have communicated directly with you in an update. We wanted to take this opportunity to address an important issue.

 

Over the last few weeks you may have heard or seen the latest advertisements from the J.A and Kathryn Albertson Foundation’s “Don’t Fail Idaho” campaign. Perhaps the most controversial claim is that four out of five Idaho students are not prepared for life after high school. There are four facts we want you to understand about this campaign:

 
It promotes an agenda that is designed to undermine public schools.
It is highly inaccurate.
It offers no real solutions to increasing post-secondary readiness.
It is a disservice to the work you do every day for the youth of this district.
Undermining public schools

 

 

Why would someone want to undermine public education in Idaho? The motive is quite clear. At a recent Downtown Rotary Club meeting, the executive director of the Albertson Foundation stated that the goal of the Foundation is to increase charter school seats by 20,000 in the next few years. That will only happen if Idahoans lose faith in their public schools.

 

 

Predicting college success

 

 

Now let’s set the record straight. The data in question have been spun to create the illusion that 80% of Idaho’s high school graduates are not prepared for college. The source of the data is the 2015 SAT test, administered to juniors in Idaho’s high schools last April. The criteria used by the Foundation? A score of 500 on each of the 3 sections of the test, and an overall score of 1550, adopted by the Idaho Board of Education as an indicator of college success.

 

 

The creator of the SAT indicated that achieving this score provides a 66% chance that a freshman will achieve a grade average of B- in the first semester at a four-year college. While this may be one predictor of success in college, it clearly does not reflect other factors that often are more important. High school grades are more predictive than SAT scores. Experience in Dual Credit and Advanced Placement courses are more important. Enrollment and success in Professional Technical coursework, such as Welding or Auto Body, is more important.

 

 

Among members of the Boise District high school graduating class of 2009 who have graduated from college, nearly 40% did not achieve the benchmark when they took the SAT or its competitor, the ACT. According to the Foundation, it must be a miracle they graduated from college.

 

 

Additionally, we know that only 1 in 10 Boise District students entering Boise State University require remediation in math and reading. This is direct evidence that at least 90% of District students are prepared for college – and that’s due to the tremendous work you do with our students.

 
Our commitment to post-secondary readiness

 

The ad is just one more indication that the Foundation is out of touch with where Idaho is going. For the first time in nearly a decade, The Governor, State Board of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Legislature, ISBA, IASA, and the IEA are working together to build up our public education system, funding schools more properly and making teacher salaries more competitive in order to improve the economy and develop a more educated citizenry. The Albertsons Foundation is trying to tear it down.

 

Your efforts are appreciated

 

 

In spite of the disheartening rhetoric that the Albertson Foundation is promoting, we know that the community supports and recognizes the work that all of you do daily to prepare our students. We will continue to oppose any effort to undermine your dedication, our students’ successes and the role public schools play in creating a vibrant, healthy city and state.

 

 

Please feel free to share the information contained herein with parents and community members who might have questions for you about the negative campaign being waged across the state by the Albertson Foundation. We value your service to the community and to our students, and we know that parents and community members do, as well.
Our District’s mission is to “graduate each student prepared for college, career, and citizenship.”

 

Thanks so much for all you do to help us achieve this mission.

 
Sincerely,

 

Dr. Don Coberly

 
Superintendent
Boise School District

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Honor Roll, Idaho, Privatization

Murdoch Paper Charges that NY Times Has a Grudge Against Success Academy Because of Its “Success”

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2016 //
72

The New York Post has an opinion column criticizing the New York Times for picking on Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy.

You see, the Times can’t stand success. So it must “destroy” these very successful schools.  
That explains why the Times wrote about the “got to go” list of children who had to be pushed out. 
That explains why the Times published the story and video of the teacher humiliating a first-grader. 

You see, as we have seen in the comments on this blog from two readers who defend whatever happens in charters, especially Success Academy, the public schools do the same, only worse. 
Whatever charters do that is unsavory, there will always be a public school that did it too. 
The only difference between charter schools and public schools, if you listen to the charter advocates, is that they are far, far better than public schools, have higher test scores, and educate exactly the same children (the reason they have so few ELLs is that the charters quickly teach them English, and they have fewer SPED because the charters magically overcome their disabilities).
But fortunately readers of this blog knew this already. 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Special Education, Testing

John Kuhn: Corporate Reformers Try to Take Back Social Media from Supporters of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2016 //
23

John Kuhn is superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district in Texas. He first emerged as a national figure in the fight for better education for all children when he spoke at the national Save Our Schools march in 2011 and gave a rousing speech.

 

 

 

 

 

Education reformers have worked tirelessly for years to advance their preferred education policy ideas using a panoply of tactics, with mixed results.
As an example, reformers have steeped future big-city superintendents in #edreformthink through the (*cough-unaccredited-cough*) Broad Academy and then deployed them to try out their ideas in the real-life laboratory of various unlucky school districts. (Update: a refreshingly large number of these superintendents have gone on to transform urban education upend large school systems with no tangible positive results before being run out of town on a rail.)

 
Another effort aimed at advancing pro-reform policy has been the embedding of Teach for America alumni in congressional offices as staffers. Then again, there is the tried-and-true tactic of having a corporation-funded organization coordinate the development and introduction of model ed reform legislation nationwide. Or, if you’re a fan of the straightforward approach, you will appreciate efforts to just expend a ton of money to force the implementation of anointed ideas, ala Gates and Zuckerberg.

 
Back in the early years of the Education Wars (when Diane Ravitch was on Twitter and her blog didn’t exist yet) it became apparent that reformers—despite enjoying the generous fiscal backing of wealthy individuals and organizations and the political backing of influential officeholders from both parties—were losing the public relations battle, particularly on social media. Scrappy teacher-bloggers and Twitter-ers were running them ragged with asymmetrical PR warfare, and they knew it. So began in earnest the development of a Marvel Universe of pro-reform social media personalities and collectives.

 
In this short article, I will highlight a few of these actors—this is a back-of-an-envelope map of one corner of the reform echo chamber, if you will—and I will let you know what they’ve been up to this week. I will also let you know where each of these voices stands on a recent high-profile story, the infamous Success Academy video.

 
THE 74

 
Apparently named for the average IQ of its contributors (just kidding guys; I’m sure you’re all Ivy League), the 74 is the brainchild of Campbell Brown and hosts pro-reform Twitterfolk like Dmitri Mehlhorn and Chris Stewart. The 74 mixes pro-reform op-eds with a dab of more newsy education pieces (like one about a campaign to prevent student suicide, for example), apparently in an attempt to come across as neutral-ish. This is window-dressing, of course, as demonstrated by the fact that the top four articles on the page as of this writing are: Nevada parents hoping vouchers survive a court challenge; Chris Stewart trumpeting a slew of news stories about non-Success-Academy teachers being mean to students; a pretty balanced story on the effect of good teachers on students’ happiness; and a story about Trump University that spends one paragraph rapping the scourge of for-profit college scams before getting to “the real story” by indulging in a ten-paragraph call for the next President to “hold all colleges accountable.”

 
Position on the SA video: “but other schools do it too” and “stop hating”.

 
EDUCATION POST

 
Another slick effort to appear neutral and above the fray by offering a “better conversation” (for discriminating education connoisseurs, one would imagine), Education Post actually peddles orthodox ed reform ideas and is, per Mercedes Schneider, funded by Broad, Walton, and Bloomberg—not exactly the Triumvirate of Educational Neutrality. Contributors include Chris Stewart (again!), Eric Lerum, and Chris Barbic. Top articles today are one about a teacher acknowledging her own biases, one arguing that what TFA haters really hate are charter schools, one telling teachers to stop using lack of parent involvement as an excuse not to teach kids well, and a thoughtful article about the tensions of being in the education politics fight and having to choose where to send your own kids to school.

 
Position on the SA video: the video’s a bummer, but Success Academy is a target because it is so much better and everyone is jealous

 
EDUCATION NEXT and EDEXCELLENCE.NET

 
These are Fordham Institute/Michael Petrilli/Chester Finn vehicles. Instead of pretending to publish objective journalism ala The 74 and Education Post, these sites pretend to publish objective research. The duo are a vehicle for motivated scholarship, of the faux variety. Like the above online journals, they are really just political devices.

 
Top stories today at Education Next are: a story about how family background influences achievement and what schools can do about it, a story about how schools of choice expand opportunity for urban students, an article contending that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor, a paean to the Common Core arguing that it forced states that rejected CCSS to adopt tougher standards, a story on desegregation and a story about academic competitions. This carousel of stories—most of them related to the 50th anniversary of James Coleman’s report “Equality of Educational Opportunity” in an apparent effort to re-cast his report as a validation of reform orthodoxies rather than a call for equity—is followed by a reformer response to film critic David Denby’s New Yorker article calling out reformers for bashing teachers. Then comes an article by Petrilli arguing that NCLB spawned a bunch of smarter school policies. (Thanks, NCLB!) Oh, then there’s a call to end required union contributions.

 
Position on the SA video: conspicuously hard to find. A search of the site reveals the last mention of “Eva Moskowitz” to be in 2014, when the site chirped, “Talk about a ‘Tough Liberal!” and said charters like hers shouldn’t be criticized for lacking diversity. A search for “Success Academy” finally takes us to a 2/15/2016 post that summarizes a Vox.com article by Libby Nelson (with the telling quote “The video is undeniably upsetting. But…”) and then goes on to point to Education Post’s limp defense of poor wittle Success Academy.

 
THIS WEEK IN EDUCATION

 
Alexander Russo’s blog also pretends to be above the fray but really isn’t. However, unlike the others, Russo does directly criticize reformers on a fairly regular basis, probably because he fancies himself a gadfly with an independent streak. In reality, his pro-reform bias is evident to me, and maybe also to the casual reader. Where The 74 and Education Post dab on the makeup of objective reporting, Russo slathers it. He does a good enough job of posting too-numerous-to-count news pieces and fun/thought-provoking pieces that it effectively softens the blow of his bias and almost camouflages his running campaign to provide journalistic cover for the Broads and Waltons of the world. One blogger put it succinctly in saying that Russo “works the refs” for reform. He’s the guy in the bleachers who reliably highlights bad calls that go against his team and often ignores bad calls against the other team, unless they’re so painfully obvious that he feels he has to grudgingly acknowledge them. But at least he tells funny stories between being a total homer.
Top stories today are a video of Obama with Civil Rights leaders, a story on Detroit teachers trying to bring attention to their schools, a collection of news articles on various issues including how school safety issues are tracked and Common Core exam glitches. Where Russo shines as a reform ally is in his careful selection of others’ opinions that he broadcasts. The first quote one comes to today is from The 74, where Matt Barnum tries valiantly to jack the mojo of David Denby (the New Yorker film critic referred to above, who had the audacity to critique public school critics in his article called Stop Humiliating Teachers) by contending that what Denby wants is really the same thing as what the reformers want. (Really, Matt? Read the article again.) Russo earns a few objectivity points for the hilarious note from a CPS parent that says his sick daughter is feeling better and “eager to get back to school in hopes of achieving a high score on…Standardized Tests…given this year to insure that Private Corporations continue to receive huge and profitable contracts…” Russo has a soft spot for snark.

 
Position on the SA video: straddles the fence—SA didn’t respond well to the reporting and NYT didn’t report thoughtfully. Russo shared the video and followed up with SA’s response video and, later, a GIF of the original video.

 
DROPOUT NATION

 
RiShawn is a trench fighter for reform. Where Russo has snark, Biddle has meanness, and he has criticized people he calls “traditionalists” pretty relentlessly. If you think about the unending terrible treatment of poor American children of color, meanness is probably a proper response, though I almost always disagree with Biddle’s prescriptions for fixing the problem. I think it comes down to this: I believe we should force ourselves to fulfill the constitutional promises that we will provide a quality public education for all American children, and Biddle appears to believe that we never will fulfill that promise because we are helplessly racist, so we might as well give up on it and find salvation for poor city kids in school choice. It’s an honest disagreement—I personally think what Biddle and other reformers advocate is akin to the biblical tale of Esau trading his birthright for a bowl of soup. In this case, the birthright is the promise that the US and state governments will by constitutional obligation–prosecutable in court—ensure that all children are adequately educated; the bowl of soup is we can trust that chains of charters started by white-collar guys who want to make money will fill the void and educate everybody better than the government has or will.

 
It wouldn’t do me any good to argue with RiShawn because he’s as convinced that public schools are hopeless for minority children as I am convinced that charter schools are designed from the outset to keep most of those kids out. To use Michael Petrilli’s eternally useful phrase, they are meant to help the “strivers”. Of course, that leaves the non-strivers somewhere. Probably concentrated in whatever remains of the public school system.
Look, I understand “educate all children” is idealistic, and I understand that we are a nation that has never gotten past racial prejudice. I also understand that giving up the hill here—abandoning the notion that “educating all children” is what we SHOULD BE ABOUT and COULD BE ABOUT IF WE HAD THE COURAGE TO DO SO—giving up that fight ensures that we will never come back to the audacious promise of public education as the protector and perfecter of a diverse democracy. We will settle for less. Exponentially less. Bowl of soup instead of birthright less. We will settle for Taco Bell as a schooling model, we will give up courts for choice, and it won’t be any better—it will be the same or worse, but the upside of it—the maximum best it could ever be—won’t even PRETEND to be that it offers a quality education for ALL kids. We will forever abandon the notion that that was even ever possible in the United States of America, and that to me is intolerably depressing. The open arms concept of free and equal education for all will be lost to the archives and we will be stuck with a few lifeboat schools and a bunch of bobbing heads in the water.

 
But today I agree with RiShawn Biddle, because he has broken with Peter Cunningham from Education Post and Campbell Brown from The 74, in that he won’t countenance the notion that Success Academy merits a defense. In fact, his lead articles today are “Success Academy Merits No Defense” and “No Excuses for Moskowitz”. Biddle’s condemnation of Success Academy practices like the one captured in the video have resulted in harsh name-calling and criticism from fellow reformers like Michael Petrilli. And Biddle didn’t come late to the party. He wrote “The Hole Eva Moskowitz Keeps Digging” long before the video emerged, after John Merrow’s piece on disciplinary practices at SA emerged months ago.

 
I’m not naïve enough to think that RiShawn Biddle and I agree on much besides the fact that SA is wrong when it comes to its disciplinary treatment of children. Our views on equitable school funding are probably aligned, and maybe some other tangential issues too. But when it comes to the speculative promise of school choice versus the literal promise of school constitutional guarantees, there is a stark difference in where we two find hope for the nation’s future. Nevertheless, I have to pause and recognize that among all the reformers, Biddle is apparently the only one brave enough to call out what Success Academy and its defenders are doing wrong. How can we expect Success Academy to change its ways when its defenders rush forth with enabling op-eds? Where other reformers are scrambling to defend a model, Biddle is stepping up to defend children. If Eva Moskowitz is Ethan Couch, then Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham are his mother taking him to Mexico to avoid punishment. I’m glad RiShawn Biddle is clearly saying this isn’t okay.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Hoboken, New Jersey: ACLU And Education Law Center Sue to Block Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2016 //
7

Hoboken is a town in New Jersey that is one-mile square. The charter industry is opening schools there, draining away white and middle-class students.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Education Law Center have filed a lawsuit to block the further expansion of charter schools.

To read the brief for the Plaintiffs, click here.

I received the following letter explaining the rationale for the lawsuit:

 

 

“Dear Ms. Ravitch,

 

 

As a cogent analyst of the national charter school movement and the insidious harm that that movement has caused our traditional schools, you often write about how communities deserve “strong, well-resourced, equitable public school systems” and that the national charter school movement “increases segregation and inequity”. (*Salon, Monday, Oct. 26, 2015, Our real charter school nightmare: The new war on public schools and teachers – Salon.com)

 

 

You have also included on your blog a post about the segregative affect the Hoboken charter schools are having on the district public schools. Now there is a new chapter to write. The Hoboken Board of Education (HBOE) is suing the New Jersey Department of Education for ignoring its own rules, New Jersey law and, most striking, New Jersey’s Constitution when reviewing a charter school renewal and expansion application. The HBOE, in petition and briefs, has detailed the segregative effect and the financial impact that Hoboken Dual Language Charter School‘s (HoLa) expansion has had and will continue to have on the Hoboken District. A District that serves a majority of the City’s neediest children because of their financial circumstances or special educational needs.

 

Now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey Foundation and the Education Law Center (ELC) have filed an amici brief in support of Hoboken District. They state that “with both New Jersey’s commitment to eradicating segregation and its historical failure to do so in mind, the Commissioner cannot be permitted to ignore the realities that present themselves in Hoboken.” They rightfully fault New Jersey’s DOE for its blatant failure to perform its duties and to ensure our schools, and Hoboken specifically, do not allow school districts separated by socioeconomic and racial classes. Classes often linked in terms of their impact on success in education. The impact is stark when the districts in issue share the same mile square city.

 

 

The ACLU/ELC explain the harm segregation causes all children and the benefits to society of integrated schools. The DOE has that duty and the obligation to stop segregation and those harms so as to encourage quality education outcomes for as many students as possible regardless of race or affluence. That obligation extends to de facto segregation, even if unintentional, which must be struck from our educational landscape. The ACLU/ELC recount the history and current state of segregation in New Jersey’s schools based on economic and minority status and note, notwithstanding New Jersey’s long held policy against racial discrimination, discrimination continues in New Jersey to the point that New Jersey has some of the most economically and racially segregated schools in the country.

 

 

http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/news/press-releases/2013-press-releases/urban-suburban-divide-widens-in-new-jersey-schools-levels-of-racial-isolation-contradicts-state-constitution/?searchterm=new%20jersey

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/05/15/the-most-segregated-schools-may-not-be-in-the-states-youd-expect-2/

 

 

The ACLU/ELC state that: “consistent with not only the law, but also deeply held legal principles that undergird New Jersey’s system of justice, the Commissioner’s decision cannot stand.” They conclude with their request that New Jersey’s Appellate Division Court “reverse the March 20, 2015 decision of the Commissioner of Education granting the requests for the renewal and expansion of the charter of HoLa, unless and until it can be shown that such renewal and expansion will not result in the continuation or exacerbation of school segregation in Hoboken.”

 

 

I encourage your readers to read the ACLU/ELC’s amici brief (attachd pdf) for additional insight as to what happens when a state government refuses to support strong traditional public schools and the fight a District has to undertake to prevent the segregative effect resulting from the State’s failure to do its job.

 

 

I appreciate any and all support you may offer in sharing this story.

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

Theresa Minutillo

 

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, New Jersey, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

EduShyster: Remind Me, What Are Charters For?

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2016 //
13

EduShyster attended a school board meeting in Brockton, Massachusetts. That town is home to Brickton High School, which has received national attention for its dramatic, teacher-led turnaround.

 

State officials came to the board meeting, and EduShyster briefly dreamed that they were there to learn how Brockton High achieved success.

 

 

But no, they were there to announce that the state was opening a charter high school to compete with the much acclaimed community high school.

 

She notes that charters in Massachusetts have shown no innovation, no breakthroughs. And she wonders: What’s the point?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Checker Finn Outraged by David Denby’s Admiration for Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2016 //
137

This is a sad story. From 1981 to 2009, nearly 30 years, Checker Finn was one of my closest friends. He was like a brother. Our families were close, and we almost telecommunicated about issues. We wrote article and reports together. we wrote a book together. We cofounded the Educational Excellence Network, and I was a founding member of Checker’s Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, as well as a colleague on the Koret Task Force of the Hoover Foundation.

 

But when I turned against testing and choice, our friendship deteriorated. I asked him if he would write a blurb for my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermines Education,” but he said it was impossible. That book announced my break with the corporate reform movement. Or as I now know it, the privatization movement. He never forgave me for breaking ranks.

 

Readers of this blog have never read criticism of Checker here. I could not bring myself to speak personally against those who were once close friends, even though our disagreements are philosophically and politically profound.

 

 

Checker, however, has finally expressed his anger towards me in print. He slammed David Denby, who has written for the New Yorker for many years, for having written a tribute to teachers. He thinks Denby has turned into a defender of the status quo, which is apparently the worst insult a “reformer” can imagine.

 

 

But the privatizers ARE the status quo. How else to describe a “movement” that includes the President of the US, the Department of Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, ALEC (which Fordham joined), all the red-state governors plus Governor Cuomo of New York, and Governor Malloy of Connecticut, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Bloomberg Foundation, about a score of other foundations, and dozens of hedge fund managers who can raise a million dollars in a few hours. If this is not the status quo, I don’t know what is. They are actually quite few in number, but their wealth and political power are immense.

 

 

Checker trashed David Denby’s paean to teachers because Checker holds teachers in low regard, especially if they belong to a union and work on a public school.

 

 

I suspect this is the paragraph that Denby wrote that most angered Checker:

 

 

““A necessary commonplace: Almost everyone we know has been turned around, or at least seriously shaken, by a teacher—in college, maybe, but often in high school, often by a man or a woman who drove home a point or two about physics, literature, or ethics, and looked at us sternly and said, in effect, You could be more than what you are. At their best, teachers are everyday gods, standing at the entryway to the world. If they are fair and good, they are possibly the most morally impressive adults that their students will ever know. For a while, they are the law, they are knowledge, they are justice….”

 

 

But there was something else that unsettled Checker. He suspected that Denby had turned against “reform,” and it was my fault!

 

 

He writes:

 

 

“If he had stuck with his abiding affection for great literature and his analysis of the difficulties of teaching it to contemporary young people, I’d have nothing but positive feelings. But along the way, besides deploring kids’ addiction to video games, cell phones, television, and ear-bud music, he’s turned into an anti-reformer. This turned up first (to my knowledge) in his loving word portrait of (the new) Diane Ravitch, published in the New Yorker in 2012. Now he’s back in the same publication with a denunciation of what he sees as the teacher-bashing ways, false allegations, and misguided ideas of education reformers. Here’s a sample:

 

 

[Denby writes]:

 

 

“Our view of American public education in general has been warped by our knowledge of these failing kids in inner-city and rural schools. In particular, the system as a whole has been described by “reformers” as approaching breakdown. But this is nonsense. There are actually many good schools in the United States—in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. Pathologizing the system as a whole, reformers insist on drastic reorganization, on drastic methods of teacher accountability. In the past dozen or so years, we’ve seen the efforts, often led by billionaires and hedge fund managers and supported by elected officials, to infuse K–12 education with models and methods derived from the business world—for instance, the drive to privatize education as much as possible with charter schools, which receive public money but are independently run and often financed by entrepreneurs. This drive is accompanied by a stream of venom aimed at unions, as if they were the problem in American education.”

 

 

Finn resumes:

 

 

“On reading this, a colleague speculated that perhaps Ravitch had written it for him as a kind of reward for his earlier tribute to her. The more important point is that he has now lent his talented pen to the anti-reform movement, which (of course) it took Ravitch just minutes to note: “David Denby,” she blogged on Valentine’s Day, “has joined our movement to restore common sense to education.”

 

 

“And a movement of sorts it has become, including not just teacher unions, polemicists, and high-powered (if, in my view, sorely misguided) intellectuals, but also opting-out parents, unrelenting education progressivists, and a bunch of folks whose latest cause célèbre is that kids are under too much stress.”

 

 

A quick rebuttal:

 

 

No, I did not ghostwrite David Denby’s tribute to teachers. He did it all by himself. He is quite a prolific writer, and he doesn’t need my help to think or write.

 

 

Yes, Denby does admire teachers. Many people-including those at the Fordham Institute, ALEC, and other outposts of corporate reform—don’t. They think they are lazy and self-serving. They can’t understand why anyone would want to be a teacher when they don’t make much money, ever.

 

 

Yes, as Denby writes, there are many good schools in America. There are many excellent public schools in America. The privatizers and public school bashers seem to have mostly gone to Exeter (like Checker) or Lakeside Academy or Andover or some other elite private school. They feel sorry for those of us who had to go to public schools.

 

 

Although I am now diametrically opposed to everything Checker believes about education, teachers, and children, I have an abiding fondness for him and his family.

 

 

I will continue fighting the terrible policies that he espouses because I know they have proven to be failures. He was and is a promoter of every imaginable alternative to public schools. So far, none of those alternatives has been successful. There comes a time to recognize that the theories you have been promoting since the early 1980s have been tried and have failed. I had that realization about 2005 or 2006 as I saw the damage done by NCLB.

 

 

I don’t think Checker will ever admit that he was wrong. But some day, maybe after we are gone, wiser heads will review this era and judge us all. I am glad I shook myself free of the delusion that schools could operate in a free market, that teachers could be treated as interchangeable widgets, and that students learn best in a culture of fear of failure. I will continue to hope that someday Checker and Mike Petrilli will see the light.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform

NBC News: Students Fall Behind in Virtual Charters; For-Profits Rip Off Taxpayers

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2016 //
23

NBC News has caught on to one of the biggest hoaxes of the corporate reform movement: the failure of virtual charter schools. About 200,000 students are currently enrolled in virtual charters. The attrition rates are high, but the industry spends taxpayer dollars constantly recruiting to increase their numbers. It is good to see the mainstream media catching on to what critics of virtual charters have known for a few years.

 

Some sharp eyed person in their news department learned about the CREDO study last fall that showed that students enrolled in these stay-at-home schools lose ground academically. In the case of math, they lose a full year of instruction for every year they are enrolled. In reading, they also lose ground, as much as 72 days.

 

The CREDO study says:

 

The first set of analyses examines the academic growth of online charter students compared to the matched VCRs made up of students who attended brick-and-mortar district-run schools. These schools are typically referred to as traditional public schools (TPS). Compared to their VCRs in the TPS, online charter students have much weaker growth overall. Across all tested students in online charters, the typical academic gains for math are -0.25 standard deviations (equivalent to 180 fewer days of learning) and -0.10 (equivalent to 72 fewer days) for reading (see Figure 3). This means that compared to their twin attending TPS, the sizes of the coefficients leave little doubt attending an online charter school leads to lessened academic growth for the average student. (p. 23).

 

As the report from NBC shows, some “reformers” are growing disillusioned with virtual charters, but others keep making excuses and say that the bad guys in the industry are anomalies. This is an excuse we are getting used to.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Online Learning, Privatization

Emily Talmage: The Phony Fables That Rephormers Tell

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
13

Emily Talmage teaches and blogs in Maine. She explains in this post how she developed the desire to teach, how she thought she would “save” poor kids from their “bad” teachers, how she learned her limitations, and how she learned through experience that the corporate reform narrative is a self-serving lie.

 

She writes:

 

 

 
When I was in college, I heard a riveting story.

 

Actually, you probably heard it too.

 

It went like this: American public schools are failing. Teachers have abysmally low expectations of their students. They are getting paid to spend their time in rubber rooms! This is the civil rights issue of our time.

 

I was indignant. And I needed a job.

 

And so, like so many college students of my generation, I went straight from college into a classroom in the Bronx as a New York City Teaching Fellow.

 

At first, I was elated. I had always wanted to teach elementary school, but it wasn’t really what you did if you went to a fancy and expensive college like I did. But now I had a way.

 

I was, of course, rudely awakened. You probably know this story too: young new teacher discovers she is utterly unprepared to manage a group of unruly students. She cries a lot.

 

I had taken a position teaching children with the “emotional disturbance” label in New York City’s district for students with severe special needs, and could do little more than hang on by my fingernails for the first year. They fought, they swore, and they saw me for what I was: a white girl from Maine who had no clue what she was doing. My experienced colleagues – the ones who were supposed be lazy and incompetent – offered to help, but I was a terrible listener. I was too busy searching for the story I had been told and trying the play the role I had been assigned – even though nothing fit.

 

By the end of my third year, I had grown humbler, but was no less gullible. This time, I fell for the second part of the story above – the part that tells how charter schools are the answer to all these failing public schools. You know, the Waiting for Superman story.

 

And so I left my position for one at a relatively new charter school in Brooklyn that modeled itself after the KIPP and Success Academy “No Excuses” regime.

 

You can read the details here, but the short version is that I was horrified. We snapped at the kids like dogs and obsessed over standardized test scores like they were cancer diagnoses. My previous school had been challenging, but it was full of warmth. There was no warmth at this school. No kindness. Panic filled our classrooms and hearts.

 

I have been fooled twice. Shame on me. But it won’t happen again. I hear, now, the stories reformers tell for what they are. Disrespect, hubris, empty jargon. PR.

 

Read on. Emily’s eyes were opened. And now she won’t be fooled again.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Teachers and Teaching

Memphis NAACP Comes Out Against Tennessee’s Experimentation on Children

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
7

The Memphis NAACP called for an end to the state’s educational experimentation. 

 

The Memphis branch opposed vouchers, which have been under discussion in the legislature, and called for a freeze on the Achievement School District.

 

“We respectfully request that there be a statewide moratorium on the addition of schools to the ASD model until sufficient improvement can be demonstrated by the existing schools,” [Memphis Branch NAACP Executive Director Madeleine] Taylor said.

 

State officials, including the director of the ASD, defended the ASD, and said that the experimentation should continue even though Vanderbilt released a study recently showing that the charter schools in the ASD have made no significant progress since the ASD started in 2012. In effect, they defended the status quo even though it has shown no results.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Tennessee

Mother of Girl in “Success” Video Speaks Up

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2016 //
53

The mother of the girl in the infamous Success Academy video told the New York Times that she withdrew her daughter as soon as she saw the video. 

 

 

“In two lengthy interviews, she said that she did not know what was happening in her daughter’s classroom before she saw the video. She said that she was so upset by what she saw — and by the network’s rush to rally around Ms. Dial, while showing little concern for her daughter or other students — that she took the girl out of the school in late January.”

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy
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